[SPOILERS] Tales from the Enchanted Forest - Thessa of the Ljosalfar

[Nyktorion]

In this thread, I'll describe my view of this FFH PBEM 3. If you are another player of this game, please leave this thread now.

[Nyktorion]

EDIT: okay, the first big post is done now In this space, I plan to put a table of contents as soon as this thread grows large enough to warrant one.

[Nyktorion]

Greetings to all lurkers, and welcome to the home of the Ljosalfar for this game!

First off, some words about myself: I do have a bit of single-player experience in FFH, but I am new to multiplayer. If you have any hints about the peculiarities of MP (as opposed to SP), or I happen to make any obviously stupid things, I always appreciate knowing about that.



In this game, we are going to be the Ljosalfar. So let's start with the special advantages we have over our fellow contestors:

• Like the Svartalfar, we are Elves. Therefore, we typically love trees. In game mechanics, this means that we can plant all our farms, mines, etc., on top of forests. This means that we get the usual improvement bonus, and the +1h from the forest on top of that! One religion (fellowship of leaves) can cause our forests to grow into ancient forests, further improving the bonus (+1f on top of the usual +1h). To go another step further, the fellowship of leaves enables a special civic giving us huge bonuses to happyness and health, making sure that we can actually put all this extra food into good use. Oh, and if we don't have enough forests, the fellowship of leaves priests allow us to grow new ones.
  
  So, with fellowship of leaves, we can essentially put cottages on many, get lots of commerce that way, and still don't have to worry too much about having enough food, production, happyness or health at the same time. Here is a nice, though small, screenshot from the web of a average late-game ljosalfar city; mind the 3/1/5 tiles:
  
  
  Alternatively, we can also build some farms, and maybe get something like this little gem I found in a german civ forum:
  
  
  
• As I said, we like forests. All your living soldiers will get double movement in forests (nice!), and a small attack bonus into forests (+10%)
  
• Elven workers are 20% slower. That's not not nice, but more than compensated by all the forest-based economy bonuses we get
  
• Elves are a bit vulnerable to cold, so (...) EDIT: tsunami and raging seas don't do cold damage, I mixed this up with Might and Magic 6, where water things indeed do cold damage. It seems that only the Illians (and anyone controlling Letum Frigus) really has ways do deal cold damage, so this might not be a weakness at all for this game.
  
• Elves like archery, so all our archers get the dexterous promotion (+1/+0)
  
• Our unique units are nothing too far from the ordinary: swordsmen are game-technically identical to axemen, fyrdwells are horse archers that need deer instead of horses, and flurries are crossbowmen who are more offesively oriented (13/12 with dexterous, Blitz, and 2 movement instead of 9/13 and 1 movement)
  
• Our hero is 6/6 with dexterous, and comes already with archery (quite early!)
  
• Our world spell "March of the Trees" turns all forests and ancient forests into new forests, and spawns a treant on each of them, which will live for 5 turns. Treants are quite strong (10 str, woodsman 2), they should hurt any attacker below the national unit tier a lot. We can either use this for defense (or even better, just the possibility that we might use this should deter others from invading us in the first place!), or even for offense (if our neighbor is close enough for the treants' 5-turn lifespan). The spell is only usable after researching the fellowship of trees religion tech, though.
  
• We are blocked from:
  • siege workshops and hence catapults, cannons, and chariots (we still have mages with maelstrom and potentially fireball, though)
    
  • arquebusiers and berserkers (still, we are hopefully one of the first to get all other national units with our economy)
    
  • alchemy labs (the most expensive +science building; however, it only comes with sorcery for the others, though)
    
• Our palace gives Air, Nature, and Life mana. Air is very nice for Maelstrom. I don't like the first two spells of nature too much, but vitalise later on might be nice to have to improve all our lands into grasslands, and some units we might build later on (Druids and Yvain) get stronger with each nature mana we have. Life mana is generally situational, but considering that the Sheaim are in this game, we might be able to put both sanctify and destroy undead to good use
  

Of the three Ljosalfar leaders, we are Thessa.


Thessa is expansive and arcane:

• Expansive gives us +3 health (should not be an issue with all of our forests, and later the guardian of nature civic), and double hammers for building settlers (yay!), granaries, and harbors. In particular, I'm looking forward to the settler production bonus here, which gets additional weight by settlers being considerably more expensive than in BTS. Also, while other civs will work mostly Lanun coast tiles or aristograrian farms (thus probably paying a considerable ratio of the settlers' costs with food), our forest economy should manage to put mostly hammers into our settlers.
  
• Arcane doubles our mage guild production speed, and increases the rate our arcane units get xp by the potency promotion. So this is mostly a military trait, which kicks in at the third tier of units (where adepts upgrade to mages). Well, we do already have a good number of economic bonuses, now this should allow us to turn from economic well-doing into a credible threat (with fireball and maelstrom) a bit faster.
  

So, what will be my general plan for this game? First, this is a FFA game, and it will be quick speed, and maybe we will be 6 players on a 7-player-size map (maybe the sea level will adjusted, though). Neither of these factors favors early aggression. In particular, the FFA factor might be big: the investments into the war, and possible diplo hits should drag both parties down compared to the other 4 players; unless one party wins the war quickly, cleanly, and decisively, it should be cheaper to just expand using settlers. Our world spell adds to that, making it much more difficult for an early aggressor to win against us; and even if he does win, it won't be quickly, cleanly, and decisively (and since there are no Doviello in this game, I don't fear attacks before the world spell becomes available too much). So growing our economy seems to be encouraged, and this pairs nicely with our (forest-)economic bonuses. Later on, when there is no more room to expand, and we are backed by a good economy, aggression might become a better choice. This will probably be at tier 3 (how convenient that our military bonus (arcane trait) starts kicking in just then!). Of course, I also hope that we will be one of the first to get those national units!

What was my motivation to choose exactly this civ for this game? Well, my main motivation was an anecdotal one: I was Thessa in my only "real" SP win on immortal difficulty yet. (Anecdotal note: I had a second win on immortal, but I don't consider it real, because I was able to capture my neighbor's starting settler at turn 2 or so, I had Remnants of Patria and Standing Stones giving +4 happy and nice production to the capital, and I got two free great persons from events; I was also Flauros in that game ). As I outlined above, the Ljosalfar also seem to match the strategic premises of this game nicely, so they were a natural first pick for me.

Now for the leader, I could have chosen another leader, of course: at least, according to what I have read in forums, Arendel Phaedra with her creative (monuments cost 60h here, compared to the 30h in BTS!) and spiritual traits (religion is much more important here than in BTS!) seems to be the cookie-cutter choice for a builderish Ljosalfar game (note: I did not really consider Amelanchier, since his two militaristic traits did not align so well with my thoughts above). Still, having won my immortal game in SP with Thessa, I believe she must have helped at least some 8). And indeed, the more-than-imperialistic settlers seem nice to me with forest-lovers. Since the elves' favorite religion also gives +1 culture, we can always put the hammers we saved on our settler into a disciple to offset our non-creativity. Also, I'd rather have potency on fireballing and maelstroming mages than on tiger-summoning priests. I might miss the temple production bonus and the lack anarchy, though. Still, I'd like to see this played out, and as a little bonus, we all get to see a different Ljosalfar leader than in FFH PBEM 2 =)

Next up: some (shorter) thoughts on the competition: what leaders are we up against?

[Nyktorion]

[SIZE="6"]WarriorKnight: Einion Logos of the Elohim[/SIZE]


Hmm, the Elohim are a civ where haven't quite seen yet how their big picture comes together. Their most visible three specialties to me are:

• If they conquer cities of other civs, they can produce the original owners' special units and buildings in that city.
  
• Their world spell is sanctuary, which expels all other players' units from their territories, and prevents any non-Elohim from entering for some time (20 turns on quick speed?).
  
• Also, their hero Corlindale can sacrifice himself to force a 10-turn-peace treaty with the Elohim on everyone. Also, if they get access to level 3 life magic, they can resurrect for this ability over and over.
  

The first item might turn out to be really nice, but in order to use it, they need to have some military success in the first place. The last two items ensure that a military strike against them will be a drawn out affair. According to the thoughts in my last post, this should make them a rather unattractive target for aggression. They also get some economic (philosophical trait) an military (defensive trait and unique buildings), but I feel they are comparatively small.

While I wouldn't like having to conquer these guys, I also have a hard time seeing them as a prime (economic or militarily offensive) threat, considering the other civs in this game. Maybe WarriorKnight can prove me wrong with this estimation, though...

[SIZE="6"]Irgy: Tebryn Arbandi of the Sheaim[/SIZE]


The Sheaim have a few ways to become quite scary opponents:

• Instead of axemen, they get pyre zombies, which explode upon death. Due to that explosion, a stack of them can be significantly more dangerous than normal axemen.
  
• With planar gates, free demonic units get summoned to their cities. The higher the armageddon counter, the more units they get.
  
• Tebryn is arcane and summoner, which emphasises adepts/mages with summoning spells (such as summon skeleton/summon specter, and many third level summoning spells). Also, one of the planar gate summons (moebius witch) is a caster starting with a significant amount of xp.
  

The pyre zombies make the Sheaim the largest military threat in the early game. Still, I should have my world spell available when they enter the battlefield, so this will hopefully turn their initial aggression towards someone else (I would find it especially convenient if they hit the Lanun, the biggest economic threat i my eyes). Later on, there is the chance that they fall behind tech-wise, as all their bonuses are purely military. If that is not the case, we might be in for a hard time from their summoners. Also, they will likely try to raise the armageddon counter as high as possible, which would not be a good thing for our lovely forests

[SIZE="6"]Mr. Yellow: Sabathiel of the Bannor[/SIZE]


Bannor are labeled the "generic" civ. Still, their bonuses might allow them to create a fearsome army with some time:

• Their biggest special is their unique crusade civic, which gives them production bonuses for units, some free unit maintenance, and drastically reduced war unhappyness. Crusade also gives them access to their world spell, which spawns melee units (demagogs) from their towns. Crusade also enables them to build demagogs and their other special unit (flag bearer)
  
• Their hero (Donal Lugh) is a mainly a melee fighter, with the ability to create (recruit) additional units every time he kills a demon or undead.
  

So the Bannor get quite a few bonuses that will help them in a conquest. However, each of their special bonuses requires the Fanaticism tech, which takes some time to get to. Until then, they have Sabathiel's charismatic and organised bonuses, so I guess they will reach the third tech tier after the less aggressive civs. If they can build their strength in time, the Sheaim (i.e. not us ) seem to be a particularly nice target, due to their hero's special ability.

[SIZE="6"]Mardoc: Hannah the Irin of the Lanun[/SIZE]


The Lanun get some nice economic, sea-oriented bonuses; the most notable are:

• They get +1f on all water tiles
  
• Financial synergises nicely with working lots of coast tiles
  
• They can build pirate coves on water tiles (they need to be at least 3 tiles apart), which evolve cottage-style. With Lanun bonus+financial bonus+lighthouse+fully evolved pirate cove, they can get a 5/2/7 tile yield on 1-4 water tiles per city
  

While their special units do not seem very fearsome (on land, that is), I expect them to be a fierce economic rival. With their improved water tiles, and the relative power of trade routes (which benefit from a coastal position), they might tech ahead of everybody - unless they get eliminated/crippled early enough.

[SIZE="6"]Thoth: Varn Gosam of the Malakim[/SIZE]


Another economic contender, with some (disciple-unit-oriented) military potential added in.

• Economically, Varn has the lack of anarchy from his spiritual trait. He is also adaptive, starting with creative (which fits well for the early game), and having the choice of becoming financial or philospohical later on.
  
• If we play on an Erebus continent map: the Malakim tend to start near some floodplains on that script. Due to their +1 commerce bonus for desert tiles, such floodplains starts would be particularly convenient for them.
  
• On the military side, their disciple units can accumulate some bonuses: sentry I for upgrading from a lightbringer, potency and mobility I from potency, and +2 extra xp from the Malakim pagan temple (desert shrine). Also, their world spell creates a free priest of his state religion for each of their cities with that religion.
  

With a nice floodplains start and financial trait at turn 70, their tech speed might become quite fast. Pair that with some extra (disciple-oriented) military opportunity by midgame, and we have another pretty dangerous opponent.

[SIZE="6"]Summing Up[/SIZE]

So, where does all of that leave us in total? Purely from looking at the leaders, I would say that I fear Hannah and Varn the most for their long-term economic potential. Short-term, I would rank Tebryn as the most dangerous in this game, though there is a good chance his pyre zombies will rather go picking on Sabathiel, Hannah, or Varn, as his chance at a swift decapitation strike is greater there. However, as the leader choice is only a tiny part of the whole picture, I won't be surprised if things will act out in a very different way than described in this post. I'm eager to get to the game, and I'm also curious to see how many of the estimates I just made will turn out to be wrong

[Nyktorion]

Turn 0

So this is our starting position:



This looks quite nice already: some forests, some resources: irrgiated corn is some nice food, and the two silks might really help my Ljosalfar, with whom I'm rather used to commerce-light starts. Anyway, it is generally a good thing to move the scout units, so let's do this. Since we can already see the southeast, and some coastline bleeding through the fog above the silks, I moved my scouts SW-SW, and NW-NW.



About the hut: I want to wait taking it until Evermore is founded in order to have a chance at a tech (gotta give luck as many opportunities as possible to smile on me).

So, it seems we are at the northeastern tip of our landmass. The uncovered area does not really compel me walk to the west with my settler, and I don't want to settle in place (1 space from the northern coast) either. Normally, a hill location would be a good city site for defensive purposes, but resource-wise, 1S to my starting location looked the most attractive. Since my settler has 4 movement points, I moved my settler 1E, onto the hill, in order to scout the ast a bit more.



Another food tile! Also, even though the computer did not show its usual blue circles here, I could just hold my right mouse button to see where the "build city" button gets highlighted. The highlighting occurred at the three circled spots. The circle 1E of myself would make for a resource-rich first city (3 different food resourced, though two are linked to more expensive technologies; and two nice commerce bonuses), though I'm a bit worried about founding on the coast. Still, the other two circles suggest that there might be more resources near these sites as well. Moving the settler 1E again revealed a bit more in the southwest:



So now we know that the middle circle is very probably worse than our starting location. Also, I don't want to scout the far southwest circle anymore (too many mountains there, too many resources in our current location. So, I went ahead and founded Evermore.

That only leaves production in Evermore and our first research project open.

Tech-wise I was drawn to both ancient chants (for god king/elder councils/way of the forests/education) and agriculture (for farms, and later Education). With this start, I think that agriculture is a clear first pick, and probably, I'll even add calendar for those nice silks before going for mysticism and hunting.

Since we start with two scouts, and we don't want early barbs or opportunistic other players to march into our capital, I'll build a warrior before anything else. In order to get the warrior out fast enough, and also profit a bit research-wise, I'm working the silk tile. I plan to switch to the corn for the last two turns of producing the warrior; this should not slow down the warrior, but allow Evermore to grow one turn faster.

This is the final situation of our first turn:

[Nyktorion]

Turn 0 - cont.

Some more information we have about our position:

First, looking at the event log revealed that Brigit (an immortal barbarian str 9 angel) already exists somewhere on the map. Maybe this is in some way the Acheron replacement?



Second, I confirmed what settings we are finally using now:

• Standard World Size
  
• Temperate Climate
  
• Medium Sea Level
  
• Emperor Difficulty
  
• No Tech Trading
  
• Double Animals
  
• Double Events
  
• All Unique Features
  
• No Acheron
  

So, we probably have a bit more space than in normal games (where we have 7 players with the same world size); that probably means later contact and more space for barbarians.

The existence of Brigit on the map combined with the "All Unique Features" option suggests that the idea of a "quest island" raised in the organisation thread might indeed have been used in this map.

Also, we could see another island with our starting settler - this could be a hint that another suggestion from the organisation thread (not everyone starting on the same landmass, but everyone reachable before optics) was picked up (we need the third cultural ring of Evermore to sail to the eastern island, though).

Last, I'll try my hand a bit at the "C&D" stuff I've seen in other PBEM thread. Here is the demo screen from the end of my turn:



What do we know about our opponents?

• We see from the scores that Irgy and Yellow have already founded their cities this turn. WarriorKnight obviously wandered around with his settler, and the other two (Mardoc and Thoth) will play their turn after me
  
• From the first three lines of the demo, it seems that one of the two is working a 2/0/2 riverside grassland cotton/wine tile and researching a second-tier tech (20% more GNP!), while the other is working some 3/0/0 or 3/0/1 food bonus resource
  
• Nobody has received any free techs or units yet
  
• EDIT: I noticed a fourth thing: the others have 17k land area together. So one of the two settled civs started landlocked; and the other is to a lake (like the one in the northwest of the visible area?), or slightly touchig a coast
  

[Nyktorion]

Turn 1

The northern scout opened the hut next to him and found 32 gold. Here is the situation after moving the two scouts:



So we have the broken sepulcher nearby. As I do not know yet how close the other civs are, and exploring the sepulcher is a considerable risk at this time (spawn of barbs who enter borders = death; spawn of other barbs = no more scouting in the south for >=100 turns?), I am not too eager to open it at yet.

Next, we'll try some C&D again: first, obviously everyone has settled now, and WarriorKnight received a free tech (no idea which one, though). Now let's look at the demo screen for this turn:

• Two out of {Mardoc,Thoth,WarriorKnight} start landlocked, while the third has 3 coast tiles adjacent to the city (that's very probably Mardoc)
  
• I am the only one working a tile which yields a hammer (that's probably because nobody wants to get out a warrior as quickly as the Ljosalfar with their 2-scout start; so people are either going worker-first, or slow-building a warrior; we'll know more when it's time for the 3-food-capitals to grow to size 2)
  
• WarriorKnight is working a 3f tile, otherwise I would be rank 4 in crop yield now
  
• Unless anyone changed their tile workings from round 1, the commerce spread is 18-15-13-12-12. The 18 GNP would fit nicely with Thoth:
  
  2 palace culture + 2 creative culture + 8c (palace) + 2c (Malakim desert river city tile) + 2c (Malakim flood plains tile) + 2c (20% bonus for researching a tech with prerequisite, which can only be mysticism)
  
• The 66 life expectancy (health = 2*unhealth) is either someone without fresh water or any forest tiles in the capital (unlikely), or a floodplains start (knowing erebus continents, probably Thoth). For Thoth, that's one either
  
  Health: 2 (base) + 1 (palace life mana) + 2 (river city tile) + 1 (1-2 forests)
  Unhealth: 1 (pop) + 2 (5-7 flood plains)
  
  or
  
  Health: 2 (base) + 1 (palace life mana) + 2 (river city tile) + 3 (5-6 forests)
  Unhealth: 1 (pop) + 3 (8-9 flood plains)
  

So, it looks like Mardoc and Thoth might indeed become the toughest enemies here. If the map indeed encourages some (pre-optics?) naval buildup, that's a plus for Mardoc. And Thoth appears to have gotten a (even in the worst of the above cases) very nice flood plains start.

[Nyktorion]

Turn 2

My scouts continued exploring the northern and southern coastlines, respectively. The northern scout found a goblin unit of the +1 poison combat kind.



The southern scout found the standing stones, and some desert.



Since the northern passage is blocked by the goblins, I plan to explore this inland desert with the northern scout a bit.

On to the C&D part. Here is this turn's demo screen:



Everything except land area is the same as last turn.

Thoth, Irgy and Yellow were scheduled for getting their second capital rings at the end of their respective turns, and got an additional 33k land area shared between them (the civ with one water tile in the first ring probably got an additional 3 water tile in the second ring). That would make the current land distribution

21k (Thoth) - 21k (Irgy or Yellow) - 17k (Irgy or Yellow) - 9k (WK) - 6k (Mardoc)

I also noticed that I have made a mistake in my GNP calculations last turn. I while the 18, the 15, and the two 12s are relatively certain, the 13 might very well be bit higher (up to 17) due possible rounding for the rival average, so the spread would be 18 - 15 - (between 13 and 17) - 12 - 12.

Question to the lurkers: on sunday, I played around with the screenshot sizes a bit; are they ok like that, or would you rather like them a bit larger/smaller? The current size already requires resizing anyway, so a change here would not be any additional effort at all.

[Nyktorion]

Turn 3

The poison goblin moved up to our northern scout. Since we are on a hilled forest and behind a river, I'll rather let the goblin try his luck (should be slightly less than 25% at 3.00 vs 3.80 str) than possibly having to retreat a worker into Evermore later.



The southern scout revealed some grassland flats, hills, and forests with some rivers flowing through. This land would make for some nice standard food-and-commerce-rich (though not at all typically elven) cities.



Last, here is the demo from this turn:

• WK and Mardoc got their second capital rings, getting a shared 19k additional land. "Rival worst" confirms that Mardoc now sits at 13k land area, and WK at 21k.
  
• Now every civ but us is working a 3 food tile, our rank in GNP has improved by one, and the average GNP went down. So Irgy or Yellow must have switched from the 2/0/2 tile to a 3/0/0 one. Since they must have had a 20% beaker bonus at 15GNP, this is probably Irgy (researching mysticism as first tech is more plausible to me than exploration, hunting, or non-Lanun fishing). That leaves the spread 18 (Thoth) - (13-15) - 12 (Irgy) - 12 (Yellow) - 12
  

[Maksim]

This land would make for some nice standard food-and-commerce-rich (though not at all typically elven) cities.

How to make any city's location typically elven -

1) Put a settler down anywhere
2) Apply one Priest of Leaves (or more, if desired) to run around in a great circle around the city's fat cross, planting trees (with magic!)
3) Leave forests to bloom and turn ancient in due course
4) If game lasts that long, send a druid to upgrade all tiles to grassland

As elves, there's no marginal land - there's just not enough priests.